On Tuesday, the House Democratic Caucus-elect will meet to select its leaders for the upcoming Congress. Both before and since the election, there has been discussion about whether the caucus should pick Nancy Pelosi as its candidate for Speaker of the House. It is hard to think of a credible reason for removing a leader who just had a tremendous victory other than the Democrat’s usual flaw of forming a circular firing squad. While Representative Pelosi — like most leaders of both parties — currently has a negative favorability rating, that goes along with the job and whomever would replace her would soon have similar numbers.
What is disheartening about this discussion is the failure to look at what does need to change — the rest of the leadership team. One of the reasons for this lack of discussion is how difficult it is to replace any of them. The current team represents a decent cross-section of the senior Democrats in the House. That will make it difficult to challenge any one of the leaders. But the problem is how long these individuals have been in the leadership. Our senior leadership is getting too senior, and it needs to renew and revitalize.
Start with likely majority leader Stenny Hoyer, Representative from Maryland. Representative Hoyer will turn 80 in the next Congress. He has been in Congress for thirty-seven years. He became Chair of the Democratic Conference (technically the number four position when Democrats are in the majority and the number three position when Democrats are in the minority) in 1989 and served in that position until 1994. In 2002, when Nancy Pelosi became minority leader, Representative Hoyer (who had earlier that year lost the race for minority whip to Representative Pelosi) became the new minority whip and has been the number two for the last sixteen years. It is not unusual in most democracies for the loser in a leadership battle to become the new deputy. What is unusual is for that person to keep that position for sixteen years.
Likely majority whip Jim Clyburn is currently 78. He has been in Congress for twenty-six years. He became chair of the Democratic Conference in 2006 (just before the Democrats took control) and ascended to majority whip in 2007. When the Democrats lost control in 2010, Representative Clyburn was given the newly-created position of Assistant to the Leader to avoid a contest between Clyburn and Hoyer over the minority whip position. As the senior minority in the leadership, it will be hard to just challenge Representative Clyburn.
With Representative Joe Crowley losing in his primary, the next person in line in the current leadership is Representative Linda Sanchez of California who is the current vice-chair of the Democratic Conference. Compared to the senior leadership, she is relatively young — will turn 50 in the next Congress — and has only been in Congress for fifteen years.
Looking at the committee chairs, twelve of the current ranking members (and the likely chairs of those committees) are over seventy. Only four of the current ranking members are under 60. For the two committees in which the ranking member did not run for re-election, the next senior member of one is over 70. The other (Veteran’s Affairs) does not have a clear-cut next in line in terms of seniority — which is problematic for other reasons as no remaining Democratic member has been on the committee for more than six years — but the next senior member is under 60. When you look at the big committees (Appropriations, Armed Services, Budget, Financial Services, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, Judiciary, Oversight, Rules, and Ways and Means), six are over 70.
While seniority and experience are important, it is also important to have a next generation that is ready to take over. One of the reasons that Representative Pelosi is the likely speaker is that you can’t beat somebody with nobody, and there is no logical successor with any significant experience in a leadership position — either in the Conference or as ranking member on a committee. Speaker Pelosi has to get started on the transition process for the next generation. We need members in their forties and fifties as chair and vice-chair of the Conference. We need to have as many younger members as possible serving as chairs of the sub-committees. With all due respect to Representative Clyburn and Representative Hoyer, they need to prepare to step down from their leadership positions after the 2020 elections and somebody needs to step up to challenge them. Saying that it is time for Representative Hoyer to make way for the next generation may not get the same traction with activists as a direct challenge to Representative Pelosi but getting into that heir apparent position is a necessary first step to making the argument that Representative Pelosi needs to step down after the 2022 election.
Those of us who were alive in the 80s remembers all of those May Day parades in the Soviet Union in which the entire senior leadership of the Soviet Union looked like they were on death’s door. And until recently, the Saudi monarchy was best classified as a group of men over 70 hoping that their older brothers and half-brothers would die first so that they could sit on the throne for ten to thirty months. A well rounded political party needs some senior members who are there to advice their younger colleagues and provide some institutional experience on what has been tried and failed. But you also need a mix of youth and vitality in the leadership as well; a group with a stake in making a better future for all. Today’s Democratic Party has too many who have been holding on for the past eight years hoping for their shot to run the House. They will get that shot, but they also need to start making way for the next generation to renew and revitalize the Democratic Party.
